Northville Wants Signs But Needs Space

All roads don’t lead to downtown Northville and the local Downtown Development Authority is trying to do something about it.

The DDA last year came up with a plan to add signs along major roadways to more easily direct motorists downtown. Those plans, however, have run into a roadblock from the Wayne County Commission and Road Commission for Oakland County and DDA members are now looking for alternatives.

“They’re what we call directional signs,” City Manager Pat Sullivan said.

Placed along such major roadways as I-96, I-275, M-14 and Eight Mile they would have pointed the way to downtown shops, businesses and restaurants.

Councilwoman Nancy Darga expressed a strong interest in getting the signs up at a recent city council meeting.

"I just feel that everybody is interested in helping people find their way and everybody is interested in economic development. So it behooves all of us to work together," she said in an interview. "We did traffic studies and we had a design plan. It was when it came to getting the permits that it stalled out."

Because the signs would have been on county property, the DDA required approval from each county to put up the signs.

That’s where the problems began.

“Wayne County didn’t want signs that said ‘City of Northville’; they just wanted “Northville’,” DDA Director Lori Ward said. “But the problem, of course, is that there’s the city of Northville and Northville Township.”

Oakland County, she added, had different objections.

“They didn’t want signs in one community pointing the way to another,” she added.

The Road Commission for Oakland County generally doesn’t allow for those kinds of sings in developed areas, spokesman Craig Bryson said.

“It’s something we might have in a more rural area, but having what we call ‘wayfarer’ signs in more urbanized areas would only add to the large number of sings already in those areas and that could lead to more confusion, rather than less.”

There is already a sign near Eight Mile directing drivers downtown. But Ward said that sign is on land owned by the local public school district and not subject to county approval.

The signs are important, officials said, because downtown is tucked between Seven and Eight Mile Roads - also known as Baseline in the Northville area - and roughly three miles west of I-275 and north of I-96.

“We’re not on a main thoroughfare,” said DDA President Greg Presley, who operates a downtown architectural firm. “We’re not like Rochester, with Rochester Road running right through downtown. We’re more intimate. That’s good in a lot of ways, but it does make it harder for people to find us if they’re not familiar with the area.”

The signs play a part in the city’s strategic plan for downtown, adopted in 2006.

Because of that, the DDA isn’t giving up.

“We’re contracted with a sign company and we’ve bought some of the hardware,” Ward said. “We’re going to sit down and decide how to proceed.”